Yeah, thats somehow what I always thought, Paterson being the 'director' of some sorts, maybe this even was the case back in the nineties. Maybe his role changed over the years, and he turned into the guy who mainly provided all the drugs, thatswhy he had to keep the copyrights on the music to make sure theres always enough cash...

Well first off, an important part is we don’t live in the same city. We always make dates to work together, and then we actually work. We’re not hanging out; it’s quite to the point—’now’s our time, we have to deliver, let’s go.’ To this day, that’s how we work best. We’re always working together in the studio. We never exchange files. Alex regularly comes to Berlin to work in my studio. That’s where we produced the last record, Chill Out World. There’s an interesting element to it that’s dramatically different from the way I worked with Holger. Discussion was 50-percent of our process of making music together. With Alex, we barely have discussions. We just let go, and have big respect for each other’s musical input. We still find total inspiration when we get together. Like the new record still gets me going. I’m really proud of it.

So I dunno. I've always found Alex an annoying prat, and always felt he was the part of The Orb that made me fucking hate them for years, but I'm slightly more inclined to believe he actually does something after reading that.

There is promotion video of making of 'Moonbuilding 2703 AD. You can see that Fehlmann is making music, and Paterson is just playing records (DJing). And that's how they work look like. I've never seen any picture where Paterson plays any kind of instrument - only DJing.

However he claims that piano part of 'Oxbow Lakes' was made by him. So maybe he just give up making music last years?

Codringher wrote:I've never seen any picture where Paterson plays any kind of instrument - only DJing.

Yeah that´s pretty much what Weston described in his banter, that he has no skills on programming beats or using music making software. Putting sampleloops on top of already existing beats seems to be his part more or less musically. Given that the new album is pretty sample-heavy, Fehlmanns words about the new record make sense. Actually sample-loops make an important part on their 90ies albums, so his input was maybe really not that little.

BTW, the new album is quite nice actually, full of ballroom-sounding strings and hawaiian guitar-samples, more than on previous fehlmann-based albums, they provide a nice warm atmosphere.

Yes, I'm liking this more with each listen. Roger Eno's additions give it that extra push, some gorgeous piano stuff from him. Overall it's more melodic than I normally expect from The Orb, which is always a good thing in my book.

Wondered who was behind that piano part - I'd heard Paterson did that piano bit of the intro to the Oxbow Lakes track from Orbus Terrarum and was thinking he was this secret wonderful piano player ... Guess not

It's a lot more digital than FSOL in places, but it's definitely the closest they've come (along with White River Junction, which I'm still not convinced didn't come about by Alex breaking into Earthbeat and nicking the first track he found). To me it almost feels like an Electric Brain Storm version of Baghdad Batteries, if that makes any sense at all.